Lushington had once told her that great politicians and great financiers were always great comedians, and now that she remembered the saying it occurred to her that Mr.Van Torp reminded her of a certain type of American actor, a type that has a heavy jaw and an aggressive eye, and strongly resembles the portraits of Daniel Webster.

Now Daniel Webster had a wide reputation as a politician, but there is reason to believe that the numerous persons who lent him money and never got it back thought him a financier of undoubted ability, if not a comedian of talent.

There were giants in those days.
The English girl, breathing the clean air of the ocean, felt as if something had left a bad taste in her mouth; and the famous young singer, who had seen in two years what a normal Englishwoman would neither see, nor guess at, nor wish to imagine in a lifetime, thought she understood tolerably well what the bad taste meant.

Moreover, Margaret Donne was ashamed of what Margarita da Cordova knew, and Cordova had moments of sharp regret when she thought of the girl who had been herself, and had lived under good Mrs.Rushmore's protection, like a flower in a glass house.
She remembered, too, how Lushington and Mrs.Rushmore had warned her and entreated her not to become an opera-singer.

She had taken her future into her own hands and had soon found out what it meant to be a celebrity on the stage; and she had seen only too clearly where she was classed by the women who would have been her companions and friends if she had kept out of the profession.